Zecchini, Laetitia

Abstract [en]

Kolatkar’s poetry corresponds to Rancière‘s definition of the literary as realm of “dissensus”, undoing strict delineating frontiers. Kolatkar refuses to draw the line between what is included and excluded – both in the space of the Bombay he portrays (and specifically the Kala Ghoda neighborhood) or in the space of writing itself, since the space of writing is linked to the space of the nation and frontiers of perception correspond to geopolitical frontiers. His poetry does not excise strangeness but makes it visible. It thrives on the “refusal of the world”, on people and objects abandoned at the margins of the nation and of our ordinary perception. It also celebrates those who oppose the certainties of identity and the sacredness of the nation (A. Appadurai). It hence subverts the ideology of Hindu nationalism that has been trying to restore an Indian-Hindu essence by purging history, language, and identity from so-called foreign, minor, or inauthentic elements. Kolatkar constantly exposes the historicity of identity and of language against nativism, the hospitality of poetics against the politics of expurgation.